Video Transcript

Chris: Hi and welcome to the SEO Podcast: Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burres, owner of eWebResults.

Matt: My name is Matt Bertram, your PPC Specialist.

Chris: PPC Specialist! Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of the podcast, this is podcast number 393. And as always we do have a tip from our previous podcast and that tip is…

Matt: I would say man, review the pages on your site that get a lot of traffic all the time, and then figure out how to improve them because it’s the 80-20 rule.

Chris: We always find clients– new clients who come to us who have pages that get lots of traffic, when we go and visit those pages, those pages don’t have calls-to-action, don’t have things to interact with. When you add those calls to actions, when you add things that they can interact with, you increase your conversions. So make sure you’re checking those pages that get lots of traffic. Subscribe, inquire, and share.

Matt: Inquire.

Chris & Matt: Boom!

Matt: That’s a new one.

Chris: Alright, we’re just moving on here. Nothing to see, just keep moving.

Matt: Nothing to see here. Keep moving along.

Chris: Remember we are broadcasting live from Houston, Texas. And right now, we’re test and measuring gurus until we come up with something else. Hey! Here, let’s have a little contest. You guys were trying to shift off– right, we had top position snatchers for a while, testing and measuring gurus. We’re really about delivery.

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: I mean we do testing and measuring internally, but what we deliver to our clients are results. So maybe you guys could come up with like, what is the dynamic duo? What is our title? And go ahead and send that to us, podcast@

Matt: SEOPodcast

Chris: eWebResults.com. Alright, so if you’re interested in getting– so you like the podcast, hopefully, you’re listening to it, if you’ve listened to it before. If you’d like 17 tips from our podcast, you can get those 17 tips by going to eWebResults.com/SEO

Matt: Tips.

Chris: Yeah.

Matt: And this is the last week to get them. So get them. We’re adding new lead magnets on the website as we speak.

Chris: Things are changing. So today we’ve got a great article. Halloween is just around the corner. So we found this kind of Halloween-related article, “Ignoring these 6 SEO strategies could come back to haunt you.” So these are the SEO strategies that could come back to haunt you. This is by Sherry Bonelli, and I don’t have her Twitter handle. So did you happen to jot her Twitter handle down? Nope.

Matt: Let’s see…

Chris: Aaron, do you think you could find her Twitter handle? And then let us know and we’ll get that out there.

Matt: We’ll add it to the video.

Chris: If this is the first time you’re watching the podcast. Howdy and welcome to the podcast. This is the part that’s called the potatoes of the podcast. We’ll get into the meat here really soon, where we’re talking about that article, six things you don’t want to ignore ‘cause they will haunt you. Yes. You wanna stay away from those. You will notice that there is another tear tattoo under my right eye.

Matt: Another one?

Chris: Yeah. So we run a contest every week. And that contest pushes for us to get 10 shikos, and that’s shares, likes and…

Matt: Follow. Follow us.

Chris: 10 shikos. If we get 10 shikos and we get a review, then we won’t tell you how leave us a review. We did not get the review, we also did not get the shiko.

Matt: But we did get air conditioning.

Chris: We did get air conditioning, yes. We are very relieved. We actually got air conditioning and our high speed internet at the same time.

Matt: Like we were just– it was crazy this last week or two. New clients, no internet working, no air conditioning, man it was just like– it was fast and furious.

Chris: You also had Chris not plugged in with his microphone for the first part of the podcast.

Matt: Listen to me!

Chris: Don’t worry, it’ll pick up on Matt’s. You can probably hear me now. Alright, so if you are in front of some sort of electronic device and you can tweet and you can– I think we’re so–

Matt: Share, like, and follow.

Chris: Share, like, and follow it. What we’d like you to do is tweet and go ahead and include the hashtag, #SEOPodcast, this is number 393. Tag us @BestSEOPodcast, @eWebResults, and also tag Sherry. She’s @SherryBonelli, S-H-E-R-R-Y-B-O-N-E-L-L-I and let her know that you’re listening to us talk about her article. She wrote a great article and so we’re gonna dive right in. Here’s how you can leave us a review. All you need to do– one of the ways to do it has three steps: go onto iTunes, create an account, and write a review. Hopefully you’ll make that review 5 stars!

Matt: What if they’re already on iTunes?

Chris: Then they just need to get–

Matt: Do they have to do the search result?

Chris: Then there’s only two– No, no. Skip the first.

Matt: Oh, okay. Alright, alright.

Chris: If you have an account. We’re trying to shorten this. We’re making this short. Okay, remember our request? So just keep it short.

Matt: Oh, yeah. Got it.

Chris: Short.

Matt: Yeah. When you land on the website, you gotta tell people what to do.

Chris: Next, you can leave us a review on Stitcher. Stitcher was one of the–

Matt: Easiest ways.

Chris: Abso–

Matt: Absolutely easiest way.

Chris: The easiest way to get there is go to eWebResults.com/

Matt: Stitcher

Chris: Stitcher. That’ll take you there. Please also leave us a review on our Google My Business page, and we’ve made it easy for you to get to our Google My Business page. All you need to do is go to eWebResults.com/G+

Matt: Yeah. Well see, leave us some Bing reviews.

Chris: Okay.

Matt: I want some Bing reviews.

Chris: We need to send them a link to that.

Matt: We want some Bing reviews. We appreciate all the Google reviews. I’m now like on the Bing bus.

Chris: You’re on the Bing–? bus bandwagon?

Matt: I’m on Bing bus.

Chris: Bing bus bandwagon?

Matt: Bing bus bandwagon. Say it three times fast.

Chris: I’m gonna chose not to say that three times. It sounded difficult enough. Next, you could leave us a review on Yelp, and to do that all you need to do is go to eWebResults.com/yelp

Matt: Yelp!

Chris: Excellent. Remember two parts of the contest. We do need a review each week and we do need 10 shikos. Here’s our profiles on the platforms where you can shikos us. You can go to– let’s see. I keep looking at this and it looks wrong, and it’s actually right– I don’t know. First thing is, go to our Facebook page. Facebook.com/

Matt: eWebResults

Chris: Yes. Go to Twitter.com/

Matt: eWebResults

Chris: Go to Instagram.com/

Matt: eWebResults

Chris: And then YouTube.com/

Matt: eWebResults

Chris: And finally go to LinkedIn.com/company/

Matt: You get the idea.

Chris: eWebResults

Matt: eWebResults

Chris: All of those will take you to our profiles on those platforms. Go ahead and shiko us. If you’re a PHP genius or a WordPress guru, we’re probably looking for you already.

Matt: We’re always looking for– we’re always looking for–

Chris: Good talent, absolutely.

Matt: Yeah. We’re always looking for good talent.

Chris: 713-510-7846. Call it and answer the questions and you’ll be started in our audio résumé process. If you are interested in a free– wait, it’s not free anymore.

Matt: No.

Chris: Interested in a comprehensive website profit analysis, you can get that comprehensive profit analysis by going to eWebResults.com and clicking the button. The word Free has been removed, yup. Now what you do get though, is you do get 15 minutes of review of your site for free with one of our internet marketing experts. So it’s still got some free components to it, it’s at that point– okay, you understand you’re getting value from the podcast. You already spent actually 15 minutes on the phone with somebody who would do the comprehensive website profit analysis with you. You know, “Okay, this is gonna be a lot of value, let’s move forward with it. It’s not free, but it’s incredibly valuable.

Matt: And by the way. We’re getting all kinds of great reviews on that.

Chris: On that, yeah.

Matt: Everybody’s loving it. We just got someone giving us a testimony that felt like a coaching call.

Chris: A coaching, yeah.

Matt: It’s really a window inside working with us. It’s what we do every month for our clients.

Chris: Yup.

Matt: It’s fantastic, so if you’re looking to take your stuff to the next level, you want just some insight and advice from an expert, please give us a call and we can get that moving for you.

Chris: Get that started. Alright, so do you have any PITFs?

Matt: Oh yeah, we’ve got PITFs.

Chris: PITFs.

Matt: PITFs.

Chris: Alright.

Matt: That’s a punch in the face.

Chris: Which is a good thing.

Matt: Yes, good thing. So Miriam Ellis, thank you.

Chris: Her article was phenomenal. Yeah, phenomenal.

Matt: We’re working on that, we’ve got so may irons in the fire, but it’s coming. We got a shout-out from– “Glad our fellow SEOers are safe, and–”

Chris: So I actually sent a note ‘cause Miriam Ellis–

Matt: I wasn’t sure what’s going on.

Chris: Yeah, I don’t know we got it chopped off there. So Miriam–

Matt: Hey, we’re getting phone calls!

Chris: Yeah, this is a technological–

Matt: There’s lots of things going on today.

Chris: Catastrophe today. So she’s out in California and around the fires, and she sent a tweet out that said, “Hey the fires are almost under control, I’m almost about to get back to SEOing.” And so I said, “Glad our fellow SEOer is safe.”

Matt: That was from us, ‘cause I was confused.

Chris: Yes. That was actually from us.

Matt: I was like, we’re PITFing ourselves now.

Chris: Yes.

Matt: And we are safe, and in air conditioning.

Chris: And in air conditioning. And with high speed internet.

Matt: And we have internet! It’s like you’re in the jungle without these things today. We also got a shout-out from Drew Marlener.

Chris: Drew Marlier,

Matt: Marlier?

Chris: I guess. Yeah, yeah.

Matt: “What’s up guys?” Like his phone’s slow, he’s looking for some new episodes.

Chris: He sent a screenshot of his phone. I don’t know if it looked like the dates were wrong or the podcast were out of order or something.

Matt: Well I think we hadn’t updated the live page.

Chris: Okay.

Matt: So everything was getting updated on the archive page.

Chris: Right.

Matt: It’s been crazy guys. And so we’ve been running hard. We also got from Turtle Media. They were checking us out for some information and we missed a little tag–

Chris: So we had some code displaying.

Matt: Yeah, we had some code displaying.

Chris: Our ankle was showing under pants.

Matt: Yeah. We’re like two men down and no air conditioning, no internet, all kinds of meetings. It’s been insane. It’s been an insane week.

Chris: So Turtle Media they said, “Huge kick in shins to you guys,” that’s obviously not a good thing.

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: I said, “Yes. Kick in the shins to us and punch in the face to you for pointing it out.” It is fixed. We fixed that right away as soon as we saw that.

Matt: Yes.

Chris: And then you’ve got one last one, right?

Matt: Yeah. We just got off a 15-minute call with Crystal Adkins. A 15-minute call, says she listens to us. She has half a million views a month for her mobilehomeliving.org, and she’s written over 470 articles on her own for her site.

Chris: Wow, punch in the face to you.

Matt: Yes.

Chris: 470 man. We got 70 more– 80 more podcasts and we’ll catch up to you in terms of podcasts, that’s cool.

Matt: The main thing that I thought was interesting is she says she listens because we don’t say, “Umm. Umm. Ummm.”

Chris: Uh-oh, maybe we got to get rid of that guru umm. Oh wait, we weren’t doing that.

Matt: Yuum, candy . Candy, Halloween.

Chris: It is Halloween, candy.

Matt: And I wanted to just give one more shout-out to our friends over at Time Tracker. Thank you for this shirt. We appreciate it, we love you. Thank you.

Chris: Yes. Alright. So I did have a little bit of news. This is just interesting to keep you up in tech. WPA2, right. So this is the technology that you use to secure you wi-fi, it has a vulnerability, so make sure you update your devices. This kind of similar to like Heartbeat a while ago. You may remember Heartbeat a year ago that made things unsafe. I think that was actually a bigger issue, this is just unsafe if you’re connected to a wi-fi device.

AlphaGo Zero, right? So this is the artificial intelligence Google machine, right? It beat the world’s best Go player. I’ve never played Go, you’ve never played Go.

Matt: I’ve never played Go.

Chris: So one of the things they say about Go, is on any given move in a chess match there’s 21 options, in Go there’s usually thousands of options, right? And so it is an incredibly complex game. Most of the world champions play on intuition, right? Not analysis but intuition. So AlphaGo had already beat the best players. This is AlphaGo Zero. It started with no understanding. It only knew the rules. They set it off to play against itself for 72 hours and then it defeated the best in world.

Matt: Well yeah.

Chris: I mean that’s kind of crazy.

Matt: They’re coming after us.

Chris: That’s crazy. I think it’s amazing.

Matt: Elon Musk. I mean like they’re coming after us.

Chris: Yeah. So yeah, it’s pretty impressive. And then Amazon is picking the second home for one of their headquarters, right?

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: And all these cities are going crazy trying to get them.

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Georgia wants to name I think the city that’s in Georgia that want’s to– is trying to woo them, it says, “We’ll name half our city after you,” or something to that– like Amazon, Georgia.

Matt: That’s pretty cool.

Chris: I feel like that should be–

Matt: That sways–

Chris: It’s gonna send them like 50 thousand employees.

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Right? So really couldn’t they just choose a random place in the middle of nowhere and build a city and yeah.

Matt: That happens a lot.

Chris: Yeah. So that is the news that we have for today. So that’s the potatoes of our podcast.

Matt: Alright.

Chris: It is time to get into the meat. Alright. So again, this is an article by Sherry Bonelli, please, please tweet her. Let her know you’re listening to her on our podcast, @BestSEOPodcast. So tag @BestSEOPodcast and her, @SherryBonelli S-H-E-R-R-Y-B-O-N-E-L-L-I and let her know that you’re listening. “Ignoring these 6 SEO strategies could come back to haunt you.” So this is great. Halloween, we got this theme. So, “SEO is a lot like trick-or-treaters,” is what she says. “If you’re brave enough to go into the scary dark night and knock on strangers’ doors, you could be rewarded with goodies!”

Matt: So true.

Chris: The difference? For SEO professionals, that’s lots of traffic and not full-sized candy bars.

Matt: Yes.

Chris: So again, these are six SEO strategies that could come back to haunt you if you ignore them. Number 1 is, “Schema markup.” So what is schema markup? You have this question, I know you asked me regularly, what is schema markup? Is it working? You run a report and it says, “Hey there’s warnings, are warnings a good thing? Warnings are actually okay when you’re doing schema markup, when you’re kind of reviewing schema markup. It’s the errors that are the problem, you wanna make sure those–

Really what schema is, is code that’s behind the scenes to help tell Google exactly what the information that it’s looking at is really talking about. So a really good example is: there is schema markup for events. So an event is gonna have things like a location, a date, maybe how long it is. Maybe it’s over a couple days, it might have an author, there might be a cost associated with it. So all of those things would be included in the schema. Some of them would be required and some of them would not be required in order to properly meet the guidelines of the schema. And so that’s really what schema is.

Alright, so the Halloween analogy is, “Schema is like having a flashlight while walking through a haunted house – it highlights the path you need to take to get out the front door.” And so yeah, this is just a great way. She gives the example of a recipe, right? A recipe’s gonna have pretty standard things like, time in oven potentially. And one of the things that was really highlighted here is, what is the rating for the recipe? That’s one of the really strong schema’s– here’s a Pro Tip, get some schema on your page related to the number of reviews that your particular product on that page has. Make sure that those show up, ‘cause those will show up in the SERP.

And users, this is why Matt asked all the time about schema. Is it there? And users can’t see it, right? They don’t know if it’s there. You could actually format the address of the location of the event, in some really crazy way that makes no sense, and behind the scenes it makes perfect sense to Google because it’s formatted right.

Matt: It’s for the robots. It’s to track stuff. I mean so when you’re talking about user experience, they don’t see it at all. But man, if it ranked properly in Google, or Bing, or any of the other crawlers, you’re not gonna get the kind of traffic you should be getting.

Chris: Or could be getting.

Matt: Or could be getting. So it’s so important to make sure that all that’s correct.

Chris: And there are tools out there. It’s a little scary, maybe a little daunting. We can certainly help you with schema. We actually have schema built into our theme/framework, right? So that’s the framework that we use on WordPress, and we got schema built into it. So when an address is displayed, boom it’s got the proper schema. If we do an event, boom it’s got the proper schema. So you’re speaking directly to Google, and Bing, and all the other search engines. If you’re a little bit nervous, there are tools out there. I have not used those ‘cause again I’m like, “Programmer, make schema work for address.” and then a week later he comes back and says, “Schema’s working for address.” Great.

Matt: And that’s about all I know. I just know you need it, and I make sure we have it. And I don’t know how it all happens.

Chris: But the tools out there are like Schema App and another one from Hall Analysis. Hall Analysis, right? So that was number 1 of the six SEO strategies that if you ignore, they could back to haunt you. Number 2 is, “HTTPS.”

Matt: Yeah, that is scary.

Chris: Man, so you’ve all experienced it, maybe even on your own site. Probably if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re well aware of it. You’ve got a couple of options when your web address comes up. If you don’t have HTTP, I think it gives you the little eye icon, which is saying, “This is not secure.” If you’ve got HTTPS, and I may have said that first part wrong. But if you’ve got HTTPS and all of the content is not delivered through a secure channel. It’ll actually say unsecured. It actually gives you more warnings about how risky that particular page is.

Matt: Very scary.

Chris: Yeah. So it’s gonna make people nervous as it comes into more prevalence. It’s gonna make even more and more people nervous. It was I think February of this year we implemented it across the board, all of our clients. All of our hosting clients, even. So we had to reach out to them and say, “Hey, you know there’s a fee associated with an SSL certificate.”

Matt: But you need to do it, you know?

Chris: In fact what we did is we installed it, and gave it to them free until the end of the year, and said, “Look, if you don’t want it, great. We’ll just turn it off. If you want it, then we’ve gotta charge you.”

Matt: You gotta do it.

Chris: You gotta do it.

Matt: You just see hacking all the time. And you need to be taking the steps to protect your client’s information. Your information, they could go in on your site and just change everything. And you just gotta be really, really careful.

Chris: Absolutely. And so you’ve gotta be careful when you’re on there and when your page is showing up and it says like, “Not secure.” next to it. So people interpret Not Secure differently. So we have some kind of behind the scenes stuff that we have that is on HTTPS, right? It’s not on a “Valid or recognized certificate,” by the browser. So the browser like hiccups and says, “Don’t go here. Don’t go here.” And we’re like, “No. It’s okay.” Because it is secure, it actually is encrypting and we know it’s safe because it’s our own certificate.

Matt: But you’ll see traffic drop off.

Chris: Yeah, it’ll die. Yeah, yeah. Many people mistakenly think that making your site secure simply means buying an SSL certificate. He actually told an interesting story about how a GoDaddy representative was trying to sell him– I think it was GoDaddy.

Matt: Did he say GoDaddy or are we throwing them under the bus?

Chris: Yeah.

Matt: Let’s not.

Chris: Let’s not do that. So it may not have been GoDaddy.

Matt: Let’s just say in that hosting provider.

Chris: We’re gonna say it’s not GoDaddy.

Matt: Let’s not do that.

Chris: It’s an internet marketing–

Matt: We love you GoDaddy, we love you.

Chris: Yes. So the person on the phone was trying to sell him an SSL certificate, and he was like, “Look, you’re doing a disservice ‘cause selling it isn’t– like me buying it isn’t the value,” one I’ve got to–One I’ve got to install it, right? So Just installing it. So imagine your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate. Somebody installs an SSL certificate. Nothing happens. Nothing changes on your website. You actually have do a whole number of things. And he outlined these. We could’ve probably done a podcast on this. We’re gonna blow right through them really quickly.

Your database pattern has to change. So everywhere in your database, if you’re on WordPress. Every place that says HTTP, it now needs to say HTTPS. Your CSS and PHP hard coded items. So if you’ve got patterns and PHP, your CSS code is referencing background images or any sort of images.

Matt: You just gotta point it to the right– you gotta point everything to the right direction.

Chris: Your HT access, right? You may need to do some mod rewrites to make sure you’re going to HTTPS instead of HTTP. Your 301 redirects also, ‘cause what you don’t want to do is you had old 301 redirects that took some– now missing page and sent it to a regular HTTP current page, and you don’t wanna– if you leave that there, and you make the right changes behind the scenes, now it’s gonna get redirected to the non-HTTPs version and then get redirected again to the HTTPS version. This is just not good.

Matt: And test everything after you implement it.

Chris: Many times.

Matt: Yes. Like test everything ‘cause you just don’t know what’s pointing where, and you just really gotta take your time and go through it a few times with that fine-tooth comb.

Chris: Then you also have to configure WordPress, and then you also have to make sure you got a– and this is what you’re talking about: monitor that progress as the domain propagates.”

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: So it’s really important. And we’ve had situations where we’re launching an SSL and for about an hour it’s kind of misscommunicating with the server. And you gotta know how to manage that properly. Just know that Google is gonna continue to show these warning flags. It’s gonna show Not Secure, it’s gonna show the little eye icon. And as people get used to seeing the green lock, that’s gonna be scarier and scarier for those users. Here’s the Halloween reference, “Chances are if they don’t find that your website is secure, that they are gonna leave faster than the baby sitter being chased by Michael Meyers.”

Matt: Oh. Well, yeah.

Chris: I think it was good. It was a good Halloween referenced there. Alright, so before we get into the next one. Matt, I have a question of you. I usually trick you. This time you read the article, so just pretend to be tricked. Which social media platform are people most satisfied with? By the way, this sounds like a really weird question in the middle of this, but we’re get to it here in a second. So which social media platform are most people satisfied with?

Matt: Hmm Chris, I don’t know. Why don’t you share?

Chris: Should I give you like an ABC?

Matt: Yes.

Chris: A: Google+. B: Pinterest. C: Wikipedia. D: Facebook.

Matt: I would say Facebook or Pinterest is what I would say. That’s what I would say.

Chris: For me, I don’t use Pinterest much, so I don’t even think about it.

Matt: Well, for advertiser, man.

Chris: Yeah, valuable.

Matt: It’s the number one. Like people are on it more than anything else, and they’re looking to buy stuff.

Chris: And they like it, like 78% are most satisfied with it. The answer is Google+, right?

Matt: Surprising, yeah.

Chris: So it surprised me. I know it surprised you when you read the article. And one of the things that we can jokingly say, and lovingly say because we really like Google is: maybe when your expectations are really low, it’s easy to satisfy people.

Matt: Chris man, today.

Chris: Just letting it go. Alright, so number 3 this is– so what is this? Number 3, this is the six SEO things, strategies that if you ignore, they could come back to haunt you. You should not ignore Google+. Alright, so the question is, are you active on Google+? Many people ignore Google’s social media platform because they think it’s a dead zone. But just understand, although it may not be the most popular, it is the platform where most people are satisfied.

Matt: Well, I understand that. I mean I know where is– I think we’re gonna talk about it next, but essentially, Google shows their stuff better. Like higher, like more, like why wouldn’t you?

Chris: Google doesn’t index the posts on Facebook.

Matt: But they get indexed through Google+.

Chris: They do index their Google+.

Matt: Why wouldn’t you?

Chris: So you can have a keyword rich– this is one of the points that they make that every post you make on G+ has a unique URL and can show up in the Google search results. That’s not true of Facebook. Now we’ve all seen Facebook on a result.

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: But the Facebook page you see on a result is really that that page is about that content, it’s never any individual post on that page or that individual, right? So individual posts don’t get indexed. It is believed– right? I always liked these, ‘cause this is our industry. It is believed that Google even ranks Google posts higher when it comes to SEO. And they say other than social media channels– well that’s true because it does index a lot of them.

Matt: Google. I got Google’s number. Man, I know what they do. Like I’ve seen it, I’ve seen what we’ve done, I’ve seen what they do, and how they treat other stuff. And there’s preferential treatment, absolutely, I mean but why wouldn’t you?

Chris: So I didn’t really see the kind of Halloween reference for this, number 3. So I added one. I said, “Google+ is like the small little house on the street with big houses that actually gives the biggest and best candy.” Right?

Matt: Oh. Oh yeah.

Chris: Right? Right? I think it’s a good Halloween example.

Matt: I mean they’re like the– what is it? The quiet man with the big stick?

Chris: Yeah.

Matt: I mean they got some…

Chris: Does he give the best candy? If you’re brave enough to go–

Matt: Oh, hold on over here. Change or cross-referencing these.

Chris: If you’re brave enough to go to the quiet man with the big stick, you get good candy.

Matt: I’m just saying like they’re– I mean they’re a huge 800-pound gorilla in the industry. And so don’t ever count them out. I mean you can throw money at something until it works. Like most of the time.

Chris: Most of the time, right. So number 4 again, “Ignoring these 6 SEO strategies would come back to haunt you,” is, “Voice search.” Right, so we haven’t mentioned voice search that much in our podcast every now and then. Google says 20% of the searches on it’s mobile app and android devices, are voice searches. If you take into account like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Siri, Cortana. By the way I just wanna comment on Amazon Echo. I have one of the Amazon Echo devices, Alexa things. I love it, it’s great. Does some really cool stuff, but if you want an answer to a question, you go to Google.

Matt: Well, Siri answers a lot of my questions.

Chris: Or Siri, right right.

Matt: Siri’s starting to answer a lot of my questions. I guess she like knows what questions I’m gonna ask, and then she like figures it out.

Chris: Should I call you out on the biggest use you have for Siri?

Matt: Spelling. I ask Siri how to spell everything.

Chris: It’s like dead silent in the office and we hear like, “Siri, how do you spell supercalifragilisticexpialedocious?”

Matt: And she tells me, every time. She gives me Wikipedia references, like she’s awesome.

Chris: She’s good.

Matt: We have a good relationship. she’s Australian.

Chris: So in this case, voice search optimization requires a different way of thinking, that’s what they’re talking about. And I’m telling you, I kinda went back and did a little more research to say– and she referenced a couple of articles. And I didn’t see any– there’s no like concrete examples, right? And it’s probably something we could a podcast on, ‘cause I think there’s some really good examples. We kind of intuitively know that if somebody’s at a computer, they do a Google search differently than they do on their phone, right? And then how do we address that in the content that we’re creating. There are two things that are absolutely valid without a doubt when it comes to voice search. One of the is– and she went back and referenced structured markup. Actually the article she referenced talked about structured markup, so that’s that schema stuff. So again, just making sure Google knows exactly what information you’re presenting on your page is gonna help you on that search.

Matt: Totally, yup.

Chris: And then the other one is better user experience on mobile.

Matt: For sure, yeah. 100%.

Chris: Right? Because the reality is, these voice searches are happening on a mobile device, or in the case of Alexa, potentially on a device that doesn’t have a mobile experience at all. But Alexa doesn’t really tie into a webpage that I see obviously.

Matt:

Chris: And then I don’t know how Siri works, ‘cause I don’t have an iPhone, but you know, you ask it a question, does it also give you search options?

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. So it answers it the best that it can, and then gives you search options. But all of those voice searches are happening on a mobile device, and so as this goes from 20– remember how searches have increased on mobile devices in general right? From like 5%, 20%, now it’s a little right around 50% depending on the industry. That’s probably gonna happen, it’s gonna continue to increase on a voice search. And that’s gonna be mobile.

Matt: I use it as much as possible. Syntax messages to add things to the calendar. It’s getting smart. She’s getting smart. She has a name. She has a name.

Chris: Siri, let’s address her appropriately. By the way, it’s just kinda fun, I don’t know if you ever tried this, but you can say, “Alexa you’re fired,” And she apologizes and says she better brush up her résumé.

Matt: Well, there was some really good ones.

Chris: On Siri?

Matt: On Siri and it changes. Like where do you bury a dead body? And it’ll give you like graves and stuff like that. And they had to like stop doing that. So there’s still some fun ones–

Chris: But not– not really. It’s Halloween appropriate actually.

Matt: Yeah, well that’s why I brought it up, but they’ve changed it to be a more PC.

Chris: Hey, punch in the face to Patik and Manny. Manny’s tuning in, I told him we would be earlier. I promised you we would be earlier, and we are actually earlier. How about that?

Matt: So we should probably put a range on the website. Like, we start promptly at 3:30.

Chris: Alright. And this is number– how did we get to number 7? I must have mislabeled something.

Matt: You’re fine. How many tips were there?

Chris: I think I missed two.

Matt: There’s six tips and you’re on tip seven.

Chris: Yeah, I don’t know. I mislabeled something. You what? I missed number 2.

Matt: Bonus round.

Chris: I missed number 2. Yeah, that’s– no, 2 is– look.

Matt: You’ve got it. You’ve got it. You’ve got it.

Chris: Okay. So let’s go through this, right? Number 1 is, “Schema Markup.”

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Number 2 is, “HTTPS.”

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Number 3 is, “Google+.”

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Number 4 is, “Voice search.”

Matt: So where’s 5?

Chris: And 6. I don’t know.

Matt: Just keep going.

Chris: The next one– Oh, I got to 8! So number 5 is, “Site audit.”

Matt: There’s only six!

Chris: Yeah, I know. Number 5 is the, “Site audit.” So this is interesting, the stats that she presented– so when we get a new customer, they actually go through our process, right?

Matt: Yes.

Chris: And our process includes an SEO audit.

Matt: Yeah. A website analysis.

Chris: So this really surprised me, that only 43% of SEO professionals always perform an SEO audit. That’s a little surprising, right?

Matt: Yeah, you gotta take a baseline. You have to. You have to take a baseline to see where you’re at, to figure out what you need to do to do improve, and it’s always good to do that ‘cause you just don’t want to build on– what is it? Assume? What does Assume mean?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. You and me. So I was surprised. And then actually the statistic is a little bit different than what they present, ‘cause they asked, do you perform an audit for new SEO clients? And statistically 56% always do. At least of those SEOers who take new clients, 56% always do, 43% sometimes it depends. That’s just surprising. And you know, sometimes Depend is a category like: if somebody just came in and said, “Hey, could you change all our images?” We’re still gonna run an audit. Like I’m trying to think of a situation where we wouldn’t run an audit, and I struggle to think of what that is.

Matt: Well, you know, if you’re flying by the seat of your pants and you don’t have a process built in, I can see it happening, but it’s not best practice.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So the kind of Halloween reference is, “Not performing a site audit is like walking into a cemetery at night: You just don’t know what you’ll run into!” Yeah.

Matt: So true.

Chris: So true.

Matt: I like it.

Chris: Alright. So I labeled it as 8, it turns out it’s actually number 6. “Ignoring these 6 SEO strategies could come back to haunt you.” And this one is, “Bing.”

Matt: Bing!

Chris: Is that why you’re wearing the Bing hat today? Is that why you’re like on the Bing bandwagon?

Matt: Well, no. It’s really because Google PPC clicks are starting to get really expensive. So I’m pushing them out to Bing. I’m also pulling them out to like the outlying areas. It’s just getting really competitive ‘cause everbody’s kinda figuring it out. So it’s just a lot of people are throwing ads on there now. So to get the Return on Investment, you gotta do something Blue Ocean, a little bit different.

Chris: Right, right. Think outside the box, and Bing is outside the box.

Matt: Yup.

Chris: Alright. So the Halloween reference, we’re gonna kick the Halloween reference off right away, “At first, Bing might seem like the last survivor in a horror movie: You’re never quite sure if they’ll make it to the credits. But luckily, Bing is still alive and well.” Here are just a couple reasons that you should be focusing on Bing, “There is less competition, so it’s easier to rank.” “You can see ranking results quicker.” Right?

Matt: Okay, yeah. That’s true.

Chris: “Paid ads are less expensive.” That’s what you were just talking about. “Bing Places for Business is an easy way to get more visibility,” and, “They’re more transparent about how they rank sites and what you need to do to rank higher.”

Matt: Google Keyword Planner pulled some stuff out, and in Bing you can actually see.

Chris: Still see that stuff, yeah.

Matt: And like if you really think about this– guys, if you really think about this, 23% market share.

Chris: Yeah. That’s a lot. That’s a lot.

Matt: Seriously like, “Oh yeah, they have 23% market share,” you know?

Chris: Yeah. Think about the market that might be searching for you, and know that 23% of them are on Bing, searching for you.

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: And so would 23% of your available market make you happy?

Matt: Would you want 23% of your market?

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Matt: Think about it like that, would you want 23% of your market? Absolutely.

Chris: And so ultimately Sherry says, “Just like Google+, Bing is not something that you should ignore.” That was awesome. So, “Ignoring these 6 SEO strategies could come back to haunt you.” Sherry Bonelli, that was a phenomenal article. I’m excited about that. Alright, so I think that’s it. Do we have anything else, that we need to do to wrap up? We gotta get ready for Halloween. I’m actually going fishing this weekend. We are celebrating in this office because the air conditioning is working.

Matt: Yes! And the internet.

Chris: And the internet is working. This is just a glorious day.

Matt: We had a VC company that was a referral from a company we had come in here. And we had these big air conditioners everywhere, and fans blowing, and people wearing shorts. There was just stuff all over the place. We had this little fan blowing on him, and he’s like, “Are y’all startup?”

Chris: Did you just move in?

Matt: He’s like, “Did y’all just move in?” There was just like, “Yes.”

Chris: It certainly has that feel for sure, yeah.

Matt: So we’re back. We’re back in action. So people wanted to work from home, it was crazy.

Chris: Alright. So yeah, let’s wrap this up.

Matt: Yes.

Chris: If you liked this podcast, we ask that you tell three people about it, right?

Matt: Yeah.

Chris: Shiko us, share or review please. We really appreciate that.

Matt: On Bing.

Chris: On Bing.

Matt: On Bing, please share it on Bing.

Chris: I need to add Bing to our list.

Matt: Let’s do it.

Chris: We’ll make it eWeb– by the time you hear this, unless you’re live on Facebook, eWebResults.com/Bing will take you to our Bing profile. If you’re interested in growing your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet…

Matt: The internet!

Chris: The internet! Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. Our process starts with a free 15-minute call. We’ll be diving into your website a little bit, and then moves into our comprehensive website profit analysis. If you have a referral, somebody who’s interested in any aspect of internet marketing– remember, we’re not just SEOers, we don’t just make websites, we deliver results with the internet.

Matt: We do it all.

Chris: Yeah. Email drip campaigns, yeah.

Matt: Like we’ll do anything. We’re across the board. I mean, we have expertise in all different areas, like we’re a one-stop shop.

Chris: Yup. You really need to have a comprehensive strategy that works together synergystically in order to kill it on the internet, and that’s what we do, kill it on the internet.

If you’re in Houston and you’re doing networking, go ahead and go to UPSocialNetwork.com and join us at the next event. We were filmed live here, at 5999, West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. Go Astros. You can get transcript, video, and audio of this podcast on our website, eWebResults.com. We are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes, that is because of all of you all. Thank you so much, thank you for your emails, [email protected]. Thank you for telling us we have our code showing on our website.

Matt: Yes.

Chris: Who was that? That was Turtle Media.

Matt: Yes, thank you.

Chris: We really appreciate you guys. Thank you for making us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. Until next time, my name is Chris Burres.

Matt: Matt Bertram.

Chris: Bye bye for now. Time tracker!

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